Rare Photos Reveal Elusive Jaguar Cubs on Oil Plantation

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For the first time, cameras have documented wild jaguars with
cubs in an oil palm plantation in Colombia, a conservation
organization announced today (June 6). This is significant for
conservationists who hope to protect the wild cats' populations
because it indicates jaguars are willing to enter the
plantations, which can break up their natural habitat.

The wild cat conservation organization Panthera set up hidden
cameras, called camera traps, in an oil palm plantation in
Colombia's Magdalena River valley. They ended up capturing
photos of two male jaguars and a female jaguar with
cubs, as well as a video of a male jaguar. [ Big
Cats: Photos Reveal Elusive Jaguars ]

The plantation is adjacent to a protected area with some natural
habitat, according to a news release issued by Panthera. This is
a good sign for the organization's goal of creating a corridor
that links core
jaguar populations within the cats' range from Mexico to
Argentina. Linking the populations is important for conservation,
because it prevents populations from becoming isolated and
inbred.

"Given the extensive amount of jaguar habitat overtaken by oil
palm plantations in Colombia, we hope that certain plantations
can be part of the Jaguar Corridor, enabling jaguars to reach
areas with little or no human disturbances," Esteban Payan,
director of Panthera's Northern South America Jaguar Program,
said in a statement.

It was already known that jaguars can move across human-dominated
landscapes through forests along river or stream banks, or using
road underpasses. But these photos and video are the first
photographic proof that jaguars entered oil palm developments in
this region, said Payan of Panthera (www.panthera.org).

Oil palm produces a vegetable oil that is used in a variety
of products, including food, cosmetics and biofuels. It is a
rapidly expanding crop in equatorial regions. To create the
plantations to grow it, large tracts of forest are cleared.

In Indonesia,
tigers appear to avoid the plantations, which become barriers
restricting their gene flow, and as a result, the health of their
populations, according to Panthera.

"Our data suggest that plantations can be part of a landscape
mosaic that jaguars will use. But careful planning that avoids
large-scale replacement of forest with huge palm oil areas will
be essential if we want to avoid the kind of isolation that
tigers now suffer," Howard Quigley, executive director of
Panthera's Jaguar Program, said in a statement.